


Abrasion

by JoBones



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: F/F, Genderbending, Post-Series, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoBones/pseuds/JoBones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rule 63 post-series fic.</p><p>She can’t ignore the ache centered just around her collarbone, right where the HOMRA mark had curled into her skin, where it had screamed out at her earlier. She burns a little to remember it. The sharp short pain, like a knife driving up through her chest, and then the way Fushimi had so easily rolled over to yank at her shirt collar and expose the mark. Like they were something else, like they were how they used to be. How casually Fushimi had remarked on the draining powers of the queen, with her own fingers still pressed lightly against Yata’s skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rule 63/Genderbend so everyone is and has always been the opposite gender. I didn't change any names, so Anna is still Anna and Eric's still Eric, etc. Tense is still a crazy fluctuating mess, please bear with me as I continue to go back and forth and edit stuff.
> 
> Also I started this before Lost Small World or the movie were released, so it's not going to be pulling from either of those sources.

They all know it, even before Anna shouts the name out across the water. Yata fucking feels it, like a swift punch right in the gut but a thousand times worse, because no matter what she can’t seem to catch her breath.

“ _No blood_! _No bone! No ash!_ ” 

The Queen is dead, but the mantra lives on.

Their voices carry flint and steel, fists pumping as hundreds of little red lights lift free from their skin. They shine like fragmented lanterns, a hazy red beacon that streaks across the night sky. Somewhere in the crowd, a small child with dust colored hair is smiling sadly.

“A lovely red.”

The kid’s voice, small and private, still carries across. Yata hears it, and thinks for a fleeting moment how sick she is of red, how quick it turns to brown. She thinks how strange and warm and weak Totsuka was on the night that led them here, how quick the blood cooled in the dark air. Her lungs feel full of smoke.

“Hey, Yata.”

She starts a little at the hand on her shoulder, quickly shrugs it off and drags an arm across her eyes before turning to meet Kamamoto. Kamamoto, who can throw fire and fight like a tank, who went out of her way in their last moments on the island to rescue both her and the traitor, and who doesn’t lift a finger now when Yata throws off her hand like it’s an offense.

“ _What_ ,” snaps Yata, bitter against the rasp in her voice.

“Some of us, we’re going over to Kusanagi’s – to kind of, commemorate.” She hesitates, rubbing at the back of her neck. “And because – I think she’s gonna need it. You know?”

 The idea hits Yata like a brick down her throat, and she clenches her fists. _Stupid, stupid, dumbass. Standing here and staring at the sky, crying for yourself._ She twists her neck around, trying to spot Kusanagi, but the chain-smoking barkeep with the wary smile and quick wit is nowhere to be seen.

“She already left,” says Kamamoto, reading Yata’s face. “She went to find…she’s going to talk to the Blue Queen, to see about getting Mikoto.”

Her eyes burn, and this time she doesn’t shrug it off when Kamamoto replaces the hand on her shoulder. 

“So?” says Yata, who suddenly feels restless. There’s too much smoke in her, and she needs air. She tugs at her headphones. “What do you want me to do?”

“Eh? Well…nothing, I’m just…letting you know,” replies Kamamoto. “That’s where we’re all going, so.”

“Fine,” says Yata. She’s already dropped her skateboard and pulled out from under Kamamoto’s hand before she calls back over her shoulder, “Then I’ll see you there.”

You can’t run away from your problems. But you sure as shit can try to outskate them.

And man, if there’s one thing Yata knows how to do, it’s skate. Her talents are…select, to put it delicately (and she doesn’t really do delicate all that often). If it involves careful negotiation, detailed logic, or polished social skills, Yata’s probably not your go-to girl. But whatever, that’s what Kusanagi is for. If you’re looking for something more along the lines of beating someone to within an inch of their life courtesy fists, a baseball bat, badass fire powers, or whatever else might be at hand, then Yata was all over it. She could also whip up a pretty mean dinner on an even meaner budget – that had used to amuse Fushimi, she remembered. Before HOMRA and swords and back alley betrayals.

Kamamoto had said they were all going to Kusanagi’s, but Yata finds herself steering more northwest, away from the sleek old bar that serves as the HOMRA headquarters. _Whatever_ , she thinks, feeling the pavement thrum beneath her feet as she twists around a corner. She’ll make her way there eventually. After it’s emptied out more, after most of the clansmen have slipped away. She still remembers the evening after word of Totsuka had gotten around, the whole bar crammed with heat and apologies. She’d spent most of that night out back with Kamamoto, drinking cheep beer and melting the empty cans into little tin puddles.

Yata turns lazily onto an empty side street crowded with tired apartments that lean and stoop. Light peaks out between some shuttered windows, but for the most part the street is dark. Yata knows the people who live here are the type who map their lives along bus routes and subway stops, who carefully measure out how much rice they can afford to use with each meal. Yata’s heart pounds for these people, but she doesn’t miss them. Some people think poverty makes you noble. The truth is it just makes you weak.

The more she keeps moving, the more the ache of the battle starts to settle into her. Without the adrenaline and the hate and the rush, the bruises and breaks have an easier time being heard. Yata just grits her teeth and pushes against the road, ignoring the throbbing in her shoulder and humming pain along her muscles.  

But she can’t ignore the ache centered just around her collarbone, right where the HOMRA mark had curled into her skin, where it had screamed out at her earlier. She burns a little to remember it. The sharp short pain, like a knife driving up through her chest, and then the way Fushimi had so easily rolled over to yank at her shirt collar and expose the mark. Like they were something else, like they were how they used to be. How casually Fushimi had remarked on the draining powers of the queen, with her own fingers still pressed lightly against Yata’s skin.

They hadn’t been this close without one of them trying to kill the other in a long time. Yata had noticed the pale shade of red on Fushimi’s lips and for a moment all she could wonder was _when did she start wearing lipstick_?

Then she had sling-shotted back into reality, and it was easy to snarl a _damn you_ as she grabbed Fushimi by the collar, demanding for the hundredth time an answer that Fushimi never really gave _._ Her lips just curved upwards, clever and derisive. _You’re still asking the wrong question_ , they seemed to mock.

It feels like days have passed since then. That’s kind of the thing about death, it sinks into you like a cannonball and leaves everything warped in its wake. Time doesn’t feel so steady. Yata sighs, lets her board roll to a slow stop. She might as well return to the bar.

The night is empty, and Yata doesn’t expect it when she turns down the road that leads to home and nearly collides with another late night dweller.

“ _Shit_!”

She veers off quickly, ramming into a set of trashcans that send her tumbling off her skateboard and onto the ground.

“Hey, what the fuck!” she shouts, extricating herself from the trashcans and looking around for the stupid dumbass that had gotten in her way. “Why don’t you watch where the hell you’re going?”

She swings her head around, and what she doesn’t expect – or maybe she does, who can fucking tell with the way her life is going – is Fushimi, standing perfectly still in her cut blues, unaffected by Yata’s near-miss. There is, for a moment, a look about her that Yata thinks she recognizes, the Fushimi that lingers beneath the warped smiles and slick knives that often find their mark in Yata, and Yata feels her fists loosen.

Then that Fushimi is gone, replaced by the one who looks at Yata slightly skewed and with a grin that stretches too far.

“Me? Watch where I’m going?” she says, fingers brushing back and forth against her sheathed sword, “Isn’t that more what the idiot on the skateboard should do, Misaki?” 

Yata clenches and unclenches her fists. The night is dark and empty, and Totsuka and Mikoto weigh so heavy. She just wants to go home.

“Just stay out of my way,” replies Misaki, reaching over to grab her skateboard. She tucks it under her arm and starts to walk forward but Fushimi, like always, blocks her path.

“Tch, what’s this? Misaki’s too tired from crying to fight?”

“Don’t call me that,” grumbles Yata. Fushimi smiles, and it strikes something inside of her. 

“You always were a crybaby, but this is bad.” Fushimi laughs lightly, leans a little closer towards Yata. “Even for you.

“Our Queen is dead,” says Yata, her voice low.

“ _Your_ Queen is dead,” replies Fushimi, tossing her head. She’s not even looking at Yata when she adds, “What, you thought heroes couldn’t die?”

“Damn you!” shouts Yata, because it’s easier to say than the hundred other things that whisper along her throat, and she hurls herself forwards. Mikoto and Totsuka are gone, mom and dad and her little brother are gone, plenty of them are all gone – but Fushimi is here, and the spike she drives in her is more tangible than death.

Fushimi doesn’t unsheathe her sword. Yata doesn’t burn bright and slam her with fire. It’s just punches and kicks, fists cracking against skin, like so many other late night fights these alleys have seen. Yata scores a punch across Fushimi’s jaw, Fushimi digs an elbow in Yata’s side. It’s just blood, breaking, and bruising for a while, and in the middle of it all Yata catches herself grinning.

Until Fushimi slams her fist into Yata’s gut, and in the split-second where she’s left squeaking for air, rams Yata into the wall, arm folded under her chin. Yata is gasping, trying to catch her breath, a task made all the more difficult with Fushimi’s arm digging into her throat. This close, and Yata can see that Fushimi’s lipstick is smudged. _Good_.

Fushimi opens her mouth, maybe to say something, but she closes it quickly and narrows her eyes.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” spits Yata. This time there’s no Lieutenant, no Kuroh, no Queen and clan to break it up. All the smoke in her is gone, there’s only a dark smoldering that’s ready to jump at the first gasp of air. 

Fushimi’s smile is low, sick, and in the slanted streetlight Yata catches the flash of the knife at Fushimi’s wrist.

The fire in her is something beyond control, like a wild bull bucking beneath her, and when her red aura rages forwards it takes all of Yata’s strength not to let the fire eat too deep. Everywhere she looks is a hazy hungry red, and somewhere in the middle of it all, the pressure at her neck disappears.

She drops to her knees, and the red aura sinks and dissolves with her. She’s panting heavily, her breath hitting the air in little white puffs. She rolls her shoulders and slowly looks up, but the road is empty. Yata turns around, but finds nothing at the other end of the alley.

One of her ribs feels like it’s cracked. The knife wound she got from Fushimi days ago has reopened, and her shoulder feels wet.

With a low groan, Yata picks herself up, takes stock of all her broken pieces. She thinks idly about how she’ll need to soak her sweatshirt as soon as she gets home if she wants to get all the blood out of it. She feels her PDA buzz in her back pocket, but doesn’t move to grab it. It’s probably just Kamamoto, and Yata doesn’t want to hear any of the worry right now.

Her skateboard is lying on its back, wheels spinning lightly in the air. She walks over and kicks it upright, rolling it back and forth beneath her foot. She pauses to give the road behind her one last glance, finding something in her hums as she watches the empty alleyway. When nothing changes she frowns, spits a wad of blood to the side, and turns away. As she pushes forward she slips her headphones over her ears, lets the thrumming of guitars and a heavy bass keep the rest of the silence away.

* * *

Fushimi does not go home that night. She doesn’t return to Ashinaka Island either, even though she knows Scepter 4 will already be starting the rebuild process and will need whoever is able to assist. Awashima will keep them working all night and probably beyond that, because Awashima doesn’t understand anything besides ‘work’ and ‘obey,’ and in the morning he’ll find Fushimi and lecture her to hell and back for her unauthorized departure.

Fushimi doesn’t care. She’s standing beneath a streetlamp in an empty part of the city, scowling down at the new tender pink along her hands. Misaki burned her, which leaves a different type of discomfort in her all together. Something sour and wrong. She curls her hands into fists, and the skin on her palms puffs and protests. She should take care of this. She should go back to the Island. She should go back to her empty room with the blank walls, tucked away in the standardized housing Scepter 4 provides. She should do something.  

Instead she stays out all night, wandering the city and ignoring the painful singing from her burns. She spends a lot of time standing in front of a shop window, examining her reflection. A lean and carved woman with shoulder-length black hair and starved eyes looks back, but Fushimi isn’t interested in her. She is more focused on the empty paleness that exists right above her heart, where the old HOMRA tattoo used to live. Now only the edged scarring exists, jagged bars with nothing left to cage. _Are they all gone?_ she wonders. _Is Misaki’s gone?_ She remembers how it felt that gray afternoon, when Misaki placed a fist just above her breast and asked _Did you forget that this mark is a symbol of our pride_? She remembers unsheathing slick and dangerous words, and how easy a mark Misaki had been for them. When she had burned the mark, eaten into herself, Misaki had stared at Fushimi as though she were unholy, and it stirred something ugly and satisfying in her. 

She spends a long time looking into that window.

The sun rises, and Fushimi squints at it, its long beams tapping at her shoulder with a gentle urging. The rest of the city is starting to lurch itself awake, and Fushimi has to push through the rush hour crowds to make her way back to Scepter 4. Most people spot her Scepter blues, or the sword at her waist, and know enough to move aside, but a few of the more bleary-eyed ones don’t catch on until Fushimi is plowing over them.

She gets as far as the Scepter 4 lobby before someone calls her name.

“Hey, Fushimi – you’re in trouble!”

Fushimi turns half-lidded eyes on Akira Hidaka, who is grinning at her from across the lobby. Her uniform bears tattered signs from last night’s battle and when she begins to walk forwards Fushimi can see that she’s favoring her left leg, but there’s still a slightly styled curl to her hair and her eyes are quick and bright. 

“Where have you been?” asks Hidaka, coming to a stop in front of Fushimi. “I was worried at first, you know. ‘Til Andy pointed out you probably just didn’t want to help clean up.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Fushimi deadpans. “Are we released yet?”

“Well, those of us that stayed on the island all night – like we were supposed to – are.” Hidaka grins, “I don’t know about you, Fushimi. Awashima wants to see you right away.” 

Fushimi makes that subtle _click_ with her tongue, like she does whenever life disagrees with her, and Hidaka laughs.

“Well, what’d you expect? Still,” she shifts her weight to her right leg, immediately winces, and switches back, “I don’t think you’re actually in that much trouble. Just more bureaucratic bullshit. You want me to wait up for you?”

Fushimi scowls. “No.”

Hidaka shrugs, “Alright. I’ll see you around, be careful.”

Her departing words leave a bad taste in Fushimi’s mouth, but Hidaka ’s already walking away. Fushimi stares after her for a moment, then turns and sighs. Her division lives on the top floor. She takes the stairs.

Seri Awashima is standing at the center of the room, going over a report with another officer when he sees Fushimi enter the room. Awashima is handsome like a statue, tall and severe with an inflexible attitude. It might have impressed Fushimi, but she knows of both the hammers that have chiseled out pieces of Awashima’s alleged stone-cold heart. He is as weak as the rest of them.  

As expected, Fushimi gets royally chewed out. Awashima is polite enough to at least drag her into his office and slam the door behind them before he starts tearing into her. Fushimi’s behavior is, apparently, inexcusable. Didn’t she realize the gravity of the situation? Doesn’t she understand the blue clan’s duty to the community? Doesn’t she understand that with her _history_ it’s especially dangerous to disappear like that?

Fushimi, who has been staring at the carpet and wondering what it would be like to grind Awashima’s face into it, pricks at the last remark. She flicks her eyes up to Awashima, who notices that he has Fushimi’s attention.  

“Sorry,” says Fushimi, and her voice is ice. “To what history are you referring, Mr. Awashima?”

Awashima exhales slowly, shakes his head slightly. “You know to what I’m referring, Fushimi. To have HOMRA’s queen die, and you disappear – ”

“Sorry,” says Fushimi again, though her tone is far from apologetic. “Did you think I would desert Scepter 4?”

“This isn’t about what I think, it’s about your performance – ”

“If you have a problem with my performance,” replies Fushimi, adjusting her glasses, “take it up with the captain.”

Awashima fixes Fushimi with the glare that crumples new recruits and veterans alike, and Fushimi meets it with a curved smile.

Fushimi’s role in their organization has been unorthodox from day one, when she first walked in with a disenchanted attitude and a burned out HOMRA tattoo. Awashima had been wary of the red traitor, but the captain had not hesitated in clapping the girl on the shoulder and passing a Scepter 4 blade onto her. So Awashima had stood by, silent and loyal, as a proper lieutenant was meant to do. When Fushimi was allowed her own private quarters, he didn’t question it. When she was transferred from the information department and promoted to working under the captain’s squad, he didn’t question it. And when the captain started passing on assignments to her that would ordinarily never have gone to a member who operated without a partner, once again, he did not question it. Awashima had accepted it all as parts of a plan he could not see and was not meant to understand, and Fushimi, though cutting and aloof, had more than proven herself.

Let her go off and do her own mysterious thing – that was all well and fine. As long as she remembered who wore _Lieutenant_ before their name.

“We were worried,” began Awashima, his face stoic, “That after the battle, you might have gone off in pursuit of Misaki Yata. To continue your fight.”

There is something low and dangerous coiled deep inside of Fushimi, and it lurches at Awashima’s words. She doesn’t like to hear Misaki’s name in other peoples’ mouths.

“That would be highly unprofessional,” replies Fushimi in a poisonous whisper.

Awashima keeps his face passive, but Fushimi’s tone bares sharp teeth and Awashima is not frightened or impressed, but sorry.

Fushimi fully expects an order to stay and work all day, as punishment for her insubordination, but Awashima just looks at her and, after a moment, tells her: “Dismissed.”

Fushimi doesn’t question the order. She turns without another word and leaves the office, leaves the building. She finds her way back up to her lonely room, where she kicks off her boots and shucks off her belt and coat, lets her sword clatter to the floor. The exhaustion hits her like a wave, all at once and overwhelming, and removing her pants and shirt seems like too much so she crashes upon her bed fully-clothed instead. She doesn’t clean off her make up. And she doesn’t dress the wounds on her palms, which hum a soft pain until she falls asleep.

xxx 

The days move forward, and Fushimi digs back into her old routine, the one she’d so nicely built up before Totsuka had gone and gotten herself shot. Shortly after the events on the island, Reisi Munakata, their queen and captain, assembles them together. Munakata has always struck an imposing figure. Even Fushimi, who slowly prowls through life with an apathetic eye for almost everything she comes across, cannot shake the awe Munakata demands from her presence. She is beautiful in a terrible way, like the end of an earthquake. No unsheathed wildness. Just a silent tableau of destruction.

“The welfare of the city is still our priority,” Munakata had said. “Until the red clan determines a new leader, all we can do is monitor them. Monitor them,” she had emphasized, her gaze lingering on Fushimi, “and that’s all.”

Munakata has the same crawling quality that Totsuka had, a knack for laying out everything in you and picking out the most curious piece. They both had a terrible talent for it. But Totsuka’s got her killed, and Munakata’s has left her with a dead queen’s blood on her hands. Fushimi doesn’t know why Munakata speaks of the red clan the way she does, as though there’s a democratic process to the selection of their leader. The blue clan is governed by a cool logic, and succession will pass on to the next in line. It’s a fluid and easy process, with little room for error or emotion.

Meanwhile, Fushimi thinks, error and emotion are practically all that’s required to join the red clan. She’s impressed she lasted as long as she did. 

xxx

It’s been weeks, and Fushimi almost doesn’t believe it when she passes by the outside of Munakata’s office and hears a voice that simply cannot be here. She shoots a look over at Awashima, who diverts his gaze – quick, but not quick enough for Fushimi to have any doubt about who is behind that door. For a moment she remains rooted, glaring at Awashima who, in turn, has become quite focused on the papers in his hands. The tips of his ears have gone a delicate pink.

Fushimi walks past him, past the desks, out of the division’s main offices and onto the floor’s main hallway. It’s empty. She scowls at the emptiness, clicks her tongue and looks around again, just to be sure, before taking the stairwell down to the courtyards on the first floor.

There is nothing – nobody – here.

“I didn’t bring her.”

Fushimi halts, hand already by the sword at her waist. She turns slowly and finds Izumo Kusanagi watching her. Kusanagi is still kind, still wears those well-fitted vests and a wavy mop of blonde hair. But there’s a more pronounced gray beneath her eyes, and maybe she doesn’t smile quite so wide. Fushimi grits her teeth, and asks:

“Who?”

Kusanagi looks amused, the way she used to on those rare occasions when Anna would act his age and ask for Kusanagi to play a game with him, to believe a fantasy he’d made up. 

“Sorry,” she says, resting her hands in her pockets, “I thought you were looking for Yata.” 

“No,” replies Fushimi, almost too quickly. She shifts her weight, and asks in a lighter tone, “But isn’t it a little stupid for HOMRA to travel without the HOMRA vanguard? Particularly,” she lays the word delicately, watching Kusanagi for something, anything, “in Scepter 4 territory?”

“Sure, good point,” replies Kusanagi, grinning. “But isn’t it stupider to bring Yata within a hundred yards of you?”

Fushimi stiffens at the comment. She feels the scars along her chest itching.

“What is HOMRA even doing here?” she asks.

Kusanagi could lie, or could tell her that that was a matter between herself and Scepter 4’s captain. But instead she withdraws a small carton from her left pocket, shaking out a cigarette and lighting it with a snap from her fingers before answering.

“Things haven’t been good between us,” she says, and Fushimi thinks she means the clans. “All this tension, the feuding. There’s no point to it.”

“That’s HOMRA’s fault, not Scepter 4,” replies Fushimi. Kusanagi blows out a thin stream of smoke and continues.

“Our next queen – or king – hasn’t made themselves known yet. We’re still waiting. So, you know, why not make the most of it? Why not set it up so there’s actually something to lead when the leader shows up?” 

Fushimi scowls. Whatever Kusanagi is talking about, it isn’t how the red clan operates. 

Kusanagi, as though she senses her disbelief, just grins.

“We’re trying to build bridges, Fushimi. Maybe you should, too.”

She takes another drag on her cigarette, lets the smoke out on a heavy sigh. Her gaze leaves Fushimi’s for a moment, wanders around the courtyard and up the glassy walls of the Scepter 4 headquarters. Fushimi doesn’t know what she could be thinking about.

After a while, Kusanagi drops her cigarette on the ground and grinds out the stub with the heel of her boot. She turns to go, giving Fushimi one last wave as she does so.

“You should come give us a visit some time, Fushimi,” she says, wearing that tempered smile again. “First drink’s on me.”

Fushimi stays where she is in order to watch the HOMRA bar keep walk away. She does not think Kusanagi can leave fast enough. It’s only when she’s disappeared from sight does Fushimi realize she’s scratching at the scars.

She scowls. _Building bridges_. Kusanagi can come here and talk pretty lies to Munakata all she wants. Fushimi doesn’t have to hear them.

Misaki is the only one of them who ever had the decency to truly treat her like a traitor.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: slurs

 

Time passes. The dust starts to settle and the red clan is still left wanting for a queen. It catches in Yata’s heart when she remembers it – and she isn’t sure, sometimes, if it’s Mikoto she’s missing or a leader, and that there might be a difference leaves a guilty sickness in her stomach. She worries it’s only her at first, but one day when she’s standing in line at the convenience store with Kamamoto, she can’t help it pouring out. They leave the store and walk along the crowded streets, Kamamoto chewing slowly on whatever it is she just bought and listening to Yata who pulls out the words like a locked up confession.

“Yeah,” says Moto, brushing at a stray crumb along her jaw. “I know.” 

Yata has her skateboard tucked under her arm, her hands shoved in her pockets when she glances up at Moto.

“What, you know?”

“Yeah, of course,” she replies. “Everyone knows it, I was talking to Akagi yesterday, she was saying – what did she say? Like, there’s an empty space she didn’t know was even there? A weird type of empty.” Moto shrugs. “I’m not good at describing things, but when she said that I thought, yeah, that’s what it is.”

Yata nods along because yeah, that’s what it is. Then she grins and snatches the pastry out of Kamamoto’s hands, crams it into her mouth before Moto can even finish spluttering out a “Hey – Yata!”

“Come on Moto!” she says, grinning with a mouth full of food. “I’m just keeping you on your toes!”

“I don’t see what stealing my lunch has to do with my toes.”

“Yeah, it’s really more to do with my stomach.”

“If you were hungry why didn’t you buy something!”

“’Cuz I got you!” says Yata. She drops her skateboard on the ground and coasts along slowly beside Kamamoto, who’s eating a little more warily now. Yata just shrugs and smiles, but Moto keeps her food out of arms length for the rest of the walk.

xxx

 Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, bleary-eyed and still on the edge of the nightmare, grasping at the empty space to her left. It takes a few seconds, and then she’ll remember and roll back over, curling in on herself. She worries that a similar type of emptiness will drive a spike into HOMRA and leave them fractured. Because Yata’s been around this fucking block before, and she knows where it goes.

But it doesn’t go there. She keeps waiting to see if they’ll splinter apart. How can they not, she’d thought in the few days immediately following the Ashinaka high school incident. Because Mikoto had been like the fucking sun, all of them living their lives according to her, and now she was gone.

Gone, but the weirdass family she’d forged together wasn’t. Plenty of days Yata wanders into HOMRA and still finds Chitose regaling a smirking Dewa with stories of last night’s conquest while Bando and Akagi arm wrestle at the bar. She can feel the gaps when she walks into the bar, the strange shifts where things don’t line up because there’s no Totsuka shoving a video camera in everyone’s face while Mikoto smokes a cigarette from the couch, but there’s still that familiar warmth that took Yata off the streets and into a home.

It’s a chilly afternoon when Yata comes tromping into HOMRA. The bar is closed and there’s no one in the main room except Kosuke Fujishima, who’s standing behind the counter, carefully wiping down glasses. People first meeting her always expect Fujishima to be loud. She’s tall and thin, with a silver row of piercings along both her ears and left brow, and hair that’s always tackling something new. She’s a bit like a human metronome, quietly keeping a calm and practiced pace to their otherwise hectic lives. But people focus on the hair and the piercings, the chain necklaces and leather jackets, and figure her for a fight. Maybe it's why she prefers the company of strays.

Not that she couldn’t take them, of course. She still had fire in her, like they all did.

Fujishima looks up at Yata’s entrance. This season she’s got a bright orange mohawk, and Yata thinks if Fujishima’s looking to settle on a look, this should be it because it’s fucking sweet.

“Stuck on cleaning duty, eh?” says Yata in greeting, leaning her skateboard against the entrance.

Fujishima shrugs. “I offered.”

Yata snorts, but doesn’t offer much else because it’s hard to make fun of Fujishima’s kindness. She looks around the emptiness and asks, “Where’s Kusanagi?”

“Upstairs, with Eric and Anna,” replies Fujishima, placing the freshly cleaned glass in her hand back under the bar. “They’re going through Totsuka’s old things.” 

Yata glances at the back staircase. She had forgotten. Totsuka had died – Totsuka had been murdered – and the hunt for her killer had followed almost immediately. At the time, they’d been angry. HOMRA had been hurt and they’d lashed back, teeth bared, instead of tending to their wounds. The funeral, they’d figured, could come later, once justice had been delivered.

Of course, then Mikoto had gone, too, and Kusanagi was left planning a double funeral. They had all helped, Kamamoto and Anna going with Kusanagi to the crematorium, Yata walking along the dew-stained grass that cold Wednesday morning when they’d gone searching for a plot. When it was over, with ashes cleanly sealed away and the names freshly carved into stone, they’d felt exhausted. The last thing any of them wanted to do was start pulling out boxes and putting away the ash tray in Mikoto’s room, the small fountain Totsuka had kept in hers. Apparently enough time had passed now that the prospect wasn’t as daunting.

“Thanks,” Yata says to Fujishima, before quickly climbing up the stairs to the second story. At the end of a long hallway is a small end table, dressed in a thin white cloth. On top of that rests a framed photo of Totsuka and Mikoto, the former beaming, the latter just allowing a sliver of a smile. There’s a cheap candle sitting on a plastic dish, its flame wavering. The whole thing was Anna Kushina’s doing, and Yata wasn’t going to argue with a young boy’s effort to mourn, but she hated the look of it. It was so small.

She finds them in Totsuka’s room, watching old reels of film. She shouldn’t be surprised. There are boxes scattered along the floor of the room, some of them half-full, most of them empty. Labels like ‘CLOTHES’ and ‘HOBBIES’ are scrawled along their sides in black marker, but the project appears to be abandoned. Kusanagi is sitting cross-legged in Totsuka’s bed, the mattress bare, with Anna leaning up against her side, rolling one of his marbles in front of his right eye. They both look tired and peaceful. Eric is sitting backwards on a chair, arms folded across the top. She turns her shaggy blonde head towards Yata when she enters the room.

“Hey Chihuahua.” Over time the bite behind the insult had faded, and Yata just nods at the greeting.

“Hey,” she replies, walking over to sit cross-legged on the floor by Eric.

They’re all focusing on the grainy film being projected on the other side of the room. In the frame, Anna and Mikoto are standing in HOMRA’s kitchen, Anna poised on a stepstool with a small apron tied around his waist. Mikoto is leaning up against the counter, a dark bandana working overtime to keep her wild red hair tucked back. She wears dark jeans and a white tank top that leaves her muscled arms bare. There is a small silver chain looped around her neck and a carton of cigarettes just visible over the top of one of her pockets. She’s still, in that way that made stupider people assume she was lazy, but even through the film you can sense the volcanic force that simmers just below her surface. Of course, no recording can ever do true justice to Mikoto, the heat that surrounded her and the way she left the air in a room crackling.

“ _What are you and Suoh making, Anna?_ ” asks Totsuka’s voice from behind the camera. Yata pulls her legs up to her chest and folds her arms around them. This is not the first time someone – usually Anna – has pulled out Totsuka’s old films. But Yata has never been part of it. The way she sees it, it’s hard enough to move on even without mementos. She remembers Totsuka’s hand resting on her right cheek, leaving a streak of her own blood before dying on top of that building. Isn’t that enough?

“ _Oyakodon_ ,” replies the Anna in the video, washing his hands in the sink before stepping off his stool, moving it over to the stove, and stepping back on it. “ _Mikoto is supposed to be cutting the chicken_.” 

“ _Well she isn’t doing a very good job of it_!” says Totsuka, swinging the camera back over to Mikoto, who flicks lazy dark eyes up at the lens.

“ _I don’t cook_ ,” she says. Even in the kitchen, cooking with Anna, her voice has that heaviness to it. It’s the first time Yata’s heard it since the island.

“ _Mikoto, you promised you would help me_.”

“ _Oho, you hear that Suoh? How can you let such a little gentleman down_!”

Mikoto lets out a heavy sigh and turns around to face the counter, where a knife and four chicken thighs are waiting. She’s reaching for the knife when Totsuka’s voice drifts in again:

“ _Suoh, did you wash your hands_?”

“ _Who cares_.”

“ _Oi, I care! I don’t want to get sick eating your dirty chicken!_ ”

“ _Who says it’s for you_?” 

“ _Suoh, I’m hurt. After all the meals we’ve shared?_ ” When Mikoto doesn’t answer, Totsuka just keeps talking, moving the camera in on the fleshy pieces of chicken that Mikoto is slowly cutting through. “ _Or is it for somebody else, eh? Somebody special? I know the blue –_ ”

Without missing a beat Mikoto picks up one of the slivers of chicken and flings it towards the camera. 

_“Hey, don’t throw raw meat at me! I could get sick!_ ”

“ _This is Anna’s meal, not mine, asshole_ ,” replies Mikoto.

“I don’t remember ever eating that oyakadon,” says Kusanagi from the bed.

“That’s because Mikoto burned it all,” replies Anna. Kusanagi laughs.

“That’s right, I forgot. Got too impatient waiting for it to cook and thought she’d hurry it up.”

On the screen, the camera pans away from Mikoto and Anna and towards the kitchen door, as Totsuka walks out and into the main room. Kamamoto is sitting at the bar with Bando, watching something on her PDA. Kusanagi is sitting in a chair near the front, flipping idly through a magazine. On the sofa beside her, Yata recognizes herself. She’s stretched out and snoring lightly, one leg thrown over the top of the sofa. The camera moves towards Yata and Kusanagi.

“ _Our Yatagarasu looks worn out_ ,” says Totsuka.

“ _Still tired out from the thing with Mole_ ,” replies Kusanagi, still focused on the magazine in front of her.

Yata sucks in a sharp breath. That thing with Mole. She looks at herself in the film and notices the dark bruise along her jaw, the fresh bandage just below her eye. This video couldn’t have been taken more than a day after that fight.

“ _Oh yeah, our brave Yata – taking on a strain by herself_.”

“ _More like idiot Yata who’s going to get herself killed if she isn’t more careful._ ”

Totsuka laughs behind the camera.

“ _Lighten up, Izumo. She made it out, right_?”

“ _She got lucky. You shouldn’t encourage her – and what’s with the camera? Seriously, why would we ever go back and watch this boring conversation_?”

“ _Boring? Give yourself some credit Izumo_!”

The Kusanagi in the film shakes her head, but she’s smiling all the same. Totsuka takes her camera over to Kamamoto and Bando to pester them for a bit, before cutting across with “ _Wait wait, hold on, I’m almost out of – ”_

The image on the screen jerks up and cuts to black, the projector in the room clicking to a stop as it runs out of film to play. For a while they all sit there, silent in the face of the bright empty screen. Then Kusanagi slides off the bed, saying:

“Well, guess we should try to get at least one thing done today.”

She stops at the hand on her arm, and turns to meet Anna. Anna has always been a strange boy, soft and hidden like a spider’s web, but he’s grown even quieter in the weeks since Mikoto’s death. Or maybe it started after Totsuka’s – they happened so quickly. He looks up at Kusangi, eyes imploring.

“Please,” he says, “Just one more?”

Yata can see the ‘no’ that hovers just on the tip of Kusangi’s tongue, but then she shrugs and slips on that familiar sorry-looking smile that isn’t really an apology for anything.

“Okay, one more,” she says, ruffling Anna’s dust colored hair. When she turns away to rummage through a box of film, he carefully flattens it down again.

Yata stands to go. Eric doesn’t comment, but Kusanagi does.

“Leaving already, Yata?”

“I forgot, I told my boss I was going into work today,” she lies. She works an odd assortment of constantly rotating part-time jobs. Her tendency to turn violent towards rude customers makes steady work a bit of an obstacle. It’s the one thing she envies about Scepter 4 – their work counts as actual, well, work.

“Okay, well be careful,” says Kusanagi, ever the parent. She’s fitting a new reel into the projector. “Make sure to swing by on Friday, Chitose owes everybody dinner over what happened last time. And watch your PDA – there’s been some strange activity going down around the east corridor.”

“Strain?”

“Maybe. But we haven’t confirmed anything yet. Just keep in touch, we’ll let you know.” 

“Sounds good. I’ll see you guys later,” says Yata, waving to them all. Eric lifts a lazy hand in acknowledgement. Anna offers a small “Good bye, Yata.”

She throws a brief good bye towards Fujishima when she gets downstairs, before grabbing her skateboard and heading out the door. She sends a quick message to Moto before slipping her PDA back in her pocket and skating off down the sidewalk, easily swerving around the people in her path.

She cannot get the image of Mikoto, standing in the kitchen and cutting up chicken, out of her head. Bantering with Totsuka while helping Anna to prepare a meal. It feels like an intrusion in some way, and it doesn’t sit quite right with Yata. She doesn’t want to forget them, but it’s so much harder to leave them in the past when you can conjure up their voices, their faces, with the simple flip of a switch.

She keeps hearing Totsuka and Kusanagi, too, finds herself absently rubbing a hand over the faint scar along her jaw, one of the few mementos she kept from that encounter with Mole. Yata has a hard enough time grappling with the ghosts that still live and breathe in the city. She doesn’t need to make it any harder with the ones that are gone.

Her PDA buzzes against her back pocket, and she fishes it out to see a message from Kamamoto.

_Getting off work_ , it says. _About 2 grab dinner, want 2 come?_

Followed five seconds later by: _Unless ur just going to steal my dinner_  

Yata shoots off a quick _be there in 5_ in reply and adjusts course towards Moto’s workplace. The sun is streaming, and despite the slight nip in the air it’s a beautiful day. She still can’t quite shake the video and their voices from her head, but she keeps skating and tries to think about what she wants for dinner. She’s all too used to this kind of haunting.

* * *

Saruhiko Fushimi has the sinking suspicion that Akira Hidaka is trying to become her friend. She has been suspicious of it for a while really, ever since the special unit was formed, and she’s done her best to fend her off, pulling out all the standard tactics. She’s been her usual unpleasant self, scorning Hidaka’s invitations to go out with the rest of the division, making sure to be extra critical of her work, keeping her late to go over things her squadmates had missed (although this tended to backfire, since Hidaka always used it as opportunity to try to get to know her better). It had all worked like a charm back in high school – with the exception of Misaki, of course. Always the exception.

The Friday afternoon is winding to a close, and Hidaka is making her way over towards Fushimi’s desk, while Fushimi just grits her teeth and tightens her grip upon her pencil. So far she’s managed to avoid trips to the park, the spa, the aquarium, and multiple bars. They’ve all been more relaxed, ever since they finally finished processing the sheer mountain of paperwork that had followed Ashinaka. It’s like they’ve been letting out one long breath since then. And why not – it wasn’t their queen that had died on that island.

“Hey Fushimi,” says Hidaka, slowing to a stop near her desk. “What are you working on?”

“Looking over reports of strain activity in the past month,” replies Fushimi, her tone flat. “There’s always more work to do when people start slacking.”

“Hey, don’t look at me! I do my share.”

Fushimi glowers at her, but doesn’t say much because it’s true – Hidaka’s one of the more competent members of the division, not that that’s saying much with this crowd. But she knows how to hold a pencil and fill out paperwork on time, which makes her invaluable.

“Yeah, you do,” concedes Fushimi. “What do you want?”

“Geeze, don’t sound so excited, huh?” says Hidaka, and when Fushimi just continues to stare, sighs and adds. “Some of us were going to go out tonight – ”

“No.”

“You didn’t even – ”

“Not interested.”

“Hey!” Hidaka slams her hand on the paper Fushimi’s reaching for, presumably a little harder than she’d intended judging by the way she blushes slightly. Fushimi flicks her eyes up at her. She thinks Hidaka is about to apologize, and Hidaka seems to think so, too, but at the last minute she gulps it back and instead offers, “I want to invite you!”

“What.”

“A couple of us, we’re going to the cinema tonight. They’re playing old movies and it looks fun and I think you should come!”

When she finishes, Hidaka smiles suddenly, as though she’s proud of herself for getting all the words out. Fushimi just rolls her eyes.

“I can’t,” she replies, tugging the sheet of paper out from under Hidaka’s hand and watching how her face falls.

“Why not? You can’t be busy again, that’s what you said last time, and the time before that! Can’t you at least come up with a better excuse?”

“I’m busy.”

Hidaka throws up her hands in the air. “Come on, Fushimi! There’s no reason to work so hard, the city has never been calmer. Why not just relax for one evening?” 

“Why don’t you ask the captain if she wants to go to your movie with you,” says Fushimi, already turning her attention back to the papers in front of her. “I never see you guys asking her – or the lieutenant.”

“The lieutenant always has his own thing going on. And the captain…”

Hidaka hesitates, and Fushimi knows what she’s trying to say. Munakata’s been different since Ashinaka. It’s not in a way any of them can really rationalize or explain, but it’s a feeling, something in the surrounding blue aura that hums between them all. Munakata spends more time shut in her office than usual, less time in the field.

But then none of them are in the field as much, especially with HOMRA so calm. Whether it’s a result of a missing figurehead or the negotiations between Kusanagi and Munakata, Fushimi doesn’t know, nor does she care to find out.

 Even so, Munakata is always the last to leave, staying late into the night, locked away within her office. Fushimi had assumed she was working, but one night when she was tending to some last minute paperwork she discovered it wasn’t work Munakata was doing, but puzzles. Fushimi had stepped into the captain’s office just to ask for clarification about a report that had slipped across her desk, and she’d found Munakata busy with a half-completed scene of a glassy lake, covered with lilies and surrounded by willows. Stacked neatly on the shelves behind her desk, Fushimi noticed boxes and boxes of puzzles – nothing less than a thousand pieces, most of them closer to two thousand. The captain had always had an interest in them, but Fushimi had never seen her tearing through them as she was doing now.

As soon as Fushimi had gotten her answer, she’d quickly said good night and backed out of the room. There had been an unfamiliar slope in the captain’s shoulders, and the way she’d looked at her had left Fushimi worried Munakata was going to start a conversation she’d rather not have. Fushimi doesn’t make a good vessel for secrets.

“The captain’s the captain,” says Hidaka eventually. “So? You’re coming tonight?”

“Are you stupider than I’d imagined?” asks Fushimi, starting to become irritated. “No. I’m not. Don’t ask me again or I’ll break your wrist.” 

“You wouldn’t hurt your own comrade!”

“Maybe not, but I would give you extra patrol duty,” replies Fushimi.

Hidaka gapes for a second, before spluttering out, “You can do that?”

“I outrank you, don’t I?”

Hidaka is rubbing the back of her neck and muttering something along the lines of “that was never really clear…” She jumps back to attention when Fushimi opens and shuts one her desk drawers with a little more force than necessary. 

“Is that all, Hidaka?”

She’s frowning. Hidaka has always been an open book, and she makes no apology of her disappointment.

“Okay, but _why_?” she asks. It’s more exasperation than whining, and the question almost catches Fushimi off-guard.

“Why what?”

“Why you won’t ever hang out with us. I mean, you must have a reason.”

“Do I need a reason to avoid wasting my time with a bunch of imbeciles.”

Hidaka’s glare says _I know that’s not true_ , and Fushimi worries she’ll be stuck here whittling at this pointless argument all afternoon. But then Hidaka pushes herself away from the desk and shrugs, smiling lightly, and that pisses off Fushimi more than anything else.

“Alright, you don’t want to see the cinema, that’s fine. Maybe next Friday.”

“I _won’t_ – ”

“Have a good weekend, Fushimi!” says Hidaka, already walking away. “See you later!”

Fushimi glares at her back before returning to the half-filled report in front of her, but the words and figures are having trouble sticking. The floor is almost completely empty by now, save for herself and Munakata, who’s tucked away somewhere in her office, working or puzzling or both.

Fushimi shakes her head, tapping her pencil idly against her desk. Hidaka could save them both a lot of time by giving up on these forced outings. People tire of Fushimi, and she’d rather they figure it out sooner than later. Only one other person had bothered with wearing down her defenses before, and look how that had turned out.

xxx 

The first time Saruhiko Fushimi noticed Misaki Yata was halfway through her first year of junior high. It was the first time Fushimi had actually come down to the main lunchroom during lunch. Since day one, she’d been taking her meager lunches in the computer lab on the second floor. It was always empty during the lunch period and no one bothered her – until that day, at least, when a passing teacher had noticed her and quickly ordered her out. No students unsupervised in the labs, he’d said.

Which left Fushimi standing alone in the crowded lunch hall, surveying her fellow students. Everyone belonged somewhere, each table sporting two or three groups of laughing students who were swapping snacks or sharing stories. The room was full of junior high chatter, loud and obnoxious and especially grating after the comfortable solitude of the computer lab.

Their school was nothing like the illustrious Ashinaka institution, where the dormitories were furnished with state of the art technology and the students banded together in times of trouble. If something like the Colorless King had ever hit Fushimi and Misaki’s school, everyone one would have been stampeding over each other to make sure they weren’t first in line. Adversity wouldn’t define them, it would destroy them. They didn’t trouble any waters, and anyone who didn’t slip nicely into the little roles they’d built for themselves usually ended up as shark bait.

There were no empty tables left in the lunchroom, so Fushimi made her way outside to the attached courtyard, where she found a secluded bench. There were less people eating outside as the weather turned colder, and even Fushimi was still chilly in her tattered hand-me-down coat.

She didn’t have a lunch that day, so she just pulled out the small handheld gaming device she kept in her backpack, ignoring the sidelong glances she was getting from the group of girls to her right. It was hard for her to get any playing done at home, under the scrutiny of her mother who would have confiscated the game in a heartbeat if she knew it existed. _Do you know how much it costs to feed you_ , she could hear her saying as her fingers slid over the buttons. Fushimi did know. She knew exactly how much she cost her mother, down to the last cent. 

“Hey heads up!”

The call came a second too late. Fushimi looked up, just in time for the frisbee to smack her right in the face, sending her glasses scattering to the ground. As her world turned blurry she could hear the group of girls next to her breaking out into hysterical giggling.

“Oh shit, shit – I’m sorry, are you okay?”

Fushimi had leaned over and was groping around for her glasses on the ground, trying to ignore the burning heat in her face and whoever was talking to her.

“Hey, these are yours, right?”

Fushimi stopped as a hand holding her glasses appeared in front of her. With a slight scowl she snatched the glasses back and straightened up, slipping them back onto her face.

With her vision properly restored it was much easier for her to make out the short girl who was looking back at her with a slightly worried expression on her face. Fushimi recognized her from their shared chemistry and literature classes, but she struggled to recall the girl’s name. She had red, shoulder-length flyaway hair and a terrible face for lying. Her shoes were scuffed and one of her socks had rolled down to her ankle but she hadn’t bothered to pull it back up. She wasn’t wearing her school blazer, and one of the buttons at the top of her shirt was missing. Somehow the uniform that Fushimi hated to crawl into every morning didn’t look so terrible on the girl. 

“I’m Yata,” she said and Fushimi’s memory clicked into place. “Are you alright?”

“Oh,” said Fushimi. “Misaki.”

“No,” snapped Misaki, looking annoyed now, “It’s _Yata_.”

Fushimi didn’t care what the girl wanted to go by. She was done with this conversation before it had even started. There was a terse silence, before someone else called from across the courtyard:

“Hey, Yata!”

Fushimi looked up to see a group of boys standing a couple yards away. One of them had his hands cupped over his mouth and was shouting. 

“What happened to our game?”

“One second!” Yata hollered back. She was pretty loud for such a small person. She bent down to grab the frisbee from where it had landed, before turning to Fushimi once more.

“Um, sorry again.”

“It’s fine,” replied Fushimi coldly. Anything to end the conversation as soon as possible.

“Hey, do we have any class together?”

“No.”

“No, no yeah, we do!” Misaki was grinning now. “I’ve totally seen you before, we have literature together, right? You sit way in the back?”

_And you sit on your desk and talk far too loudly with your friends before class starts_ , Fushimi wanted to say. Instead she answered with, “Yes, I do.”

“Yata!” called the boy again. “At least toss it back to us!”

Misaki grinned and turned away from Fushimi for a second, stepping forwards and letting the frisbee in her right hand fly. It went soaring over the group of boys, some of whom groaned and looked agitated, but they didn’t call after her again. She turned her attention back to Fushimi

“What are you playing?” she asked, just noticing the game in Fushimi’s hand.

“What do you care?” asked Fushimi, pulling the game closer to her.

“Aw come on, let me see!” replied Misaki, flopping down on the bench next to her and leaning over Fushimi’s shoulder.

“No!” said Fushimi, more blunt than she’d intended. But this girl had dropped into her routine with all the grace of an elephant and Fushimi had no frame of reference for how to handle it. She scooted over to the right, though she wasn’t quick enough for Misaki to avoid noticing the game.

“Hey, is that _Sword Dynamic 4_?” she asked, her tone excited. “I still haven’t gotten it, it looks awesome! Can I see it?”

“Tch, you’re so nosy!”

“Hey, I’m not nosy! I’m just asking, aren’t I?”

“You hit me with a frisbee and now you’re demanding to see my game!”

“I said sorry about the frisbee, didn’t I? What else do you want?”

“I want you to go _away_ ,” replied Fushimi. She could hear the girls over to the side laughing again. So could Misaki, apparently.

“ _Hey_ ,” she snapped, turning towards them. “What are you laughing at?”

They all grinned at each other, before their leader, a petite girl with dyed-blonde hair whose socks didn’t run at all and whose shirt was missing none of its buttons, turned and answered, “Nothing, Yata – it’s just funny how _guys_ like you never know how to take no for an answer.” Her friends started giggling again, and even she couldn’t help laughing when she added, nodding towards Fushimi, “Even _she’s_ not that desperate!”

Fushimi could see the way Misaki’s ears were burning bright red. She couldn’t have said in that moment why she did it – if it was because she didn’t want to see Misaki starting any fights, or if it was just that she was so fucking sick of the cruel way her classmates functioned – but then she wasn’t really thinking much at all when she turned to the girl.

“Yeah – if I was that desperate I’d probably dye my hair a tacky blonde and stuff my bra, too,” said Fushimi, eyeing the girl’s breasts and raising one questioning eyebrow before standing up and grabbing Misaki’s wrist. “Let’s go.”

It was like throwing a rock at a hornet’s nest. All the girls exploded into angry tittering, while Misaki just stared at Fushimi, allowing herself to be pulled along. The main girl sat there, gaping, until Fushimi was nearly out of the courtyard.

“Stop staring at my chest!” she shouted after her, “Fucking _dyke_!”

“Hey fuck you!” Misaki shouted back. Fushimi didn’t even bother to look. She could scarcely believe what her life had become in the ten minutes she’d spent outside of the computer lab. Until that day, she didn’t think she’d said more than five words to any of her classmates.

“Where are we going?” asked Misaki when Fushimi started to lead them off the campus. She was irritated to realize she’d been holding onto Misaki’s wrist the whole time, and quickly let go.

“ _We_ are not going anywhere,” she replied. “I’m going home.” Which was a lie.

“You’re gonna skip school just to go home?” asked Misaki. Who was still following her, for some reason.

“What do you care?”

Now it was Misaki who reached forwards and grabbed Fushimi’s wrist. Fushimi couldn’t help but notice the red nail polish the other girl was wearing, the paint mostly chipped but still bright.

“I really am sorry about hitting you with the frisbee.”

“I don’t – ”

“I’ll make it up to you!”

“What?”

“For the frisbee and those jerks. We can go to the arcade or something. Not like you have other plans, right?”

“You don’t know that.”

Misaki just rolled her eyes and grinned. There was nothing sinister or undercutting in it; when she smiled, it was genuine. Fushimi didn’t know anyone else who smiled like that.

“Please?” The smile faltered for a second, and then it was back, a little more sheepish. “I just realized I don’t know your name.”

Fushimi could have wrenched her arm away then. She could have made something up.

“Saruhiko Fushimi,” she supplied, in as bored a tone as she could muster.

“Saruhiko…” said Misaki, trying it out. Fushimi thought it made her name feel like a whole new sound. “Can I call you Saru?”

“If I can call you Misaki.”

She scowled. “I told you, I go by Yata!”

“But why? Misaki seems so fitting,” said Fushimi, whose smiles weren’t nearly as endearing as Misaki’s were.  

“Fine, call me whatever you want,” she replied, “As long as you come with me to the arcade!”

With Misaki’s hand tight around her wrist, Fushimi didn’t think there was much else she could do but let herself be dragged along, leaving the school and its students and the courtyard far behind her.

xxx 

Lieutenant Awashima walks in close to seven. He stops and stares when he catches sight of Fushimi, still sitting at her desk. It takes Fushimi a second longer than it should for her to even realize the lieutenant is there.

“What?” she asks, her voice flat.

“It’s nearly seven on a Friday afternoon,” replies Awashima. “I would’ve thought you’d have left by now.”

“Just taking care of some last-minute things,” supplies Fushimi. She glances at the report in front of her, which she hasn’t added a single word to since Hidaka’s departure.

“Well as your commanding officer, I order you to go home and get some rest.”

Sometimes Awashima says things like that in an effort to be funny or more sociable, but it’s hard to tell with the way he uses the same painfully forthright tone for everything.

“Fine, fine,” says Fushimi, pushing away from her desk and beginning to slowly pack away her things. Awashima watches for a moment, then makes his way back to the captain’s office where he knocks softly and calls out “Captain?” before entering.

When Fushimi gets back to her division’s dormitory she stops by the common room for a moment, just to confirm that it’s empty. Everyone is either at the movie Hidaka mentioned or lost somewhere else in the city, probably wasting their time in hazy bars or crowded clubs, the types of places Fushimi has already decided she’s given up on. She rummages around the cupboards in the attached kitchen before deciding she isn’t actually hungry and making her way back to her room. She’s allowed her own private quarters, for which she’s grateful, but the empty bottom bunk often leaves her feeling as though she’s meant to be either missing or waiting for someone.

It’s barely past nine when Fushimi slips into bed, certain she’ll be woken up later by Andy’s drunken shouting anyway. She falls asleep the same way she has for years now – alone, in the dark, and with the covers pulled tight. The rest of the division comes stumbling back in around three, pleasantly tipsy and laughing loudly, and it’s Hidaka who notices the darkness under Fushimi’s door and urges everyone to be quiet.

When Fushimi starts awake at four in the morning, it’s thanks to the usual restless dreams. She doesn’t hear a single sound from the rest of her division for the whole night.

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Shit, Moto,” says Yata, feet swinging. It’s a Thursday afternoon, and they’re both stretched out on a bench in one of the city’s few parks. It’s a tiny space, sandwiched within a few blocks, but it’s grassy and green and the thick line of trees around the park’s edge dulls the rumble and roar of the Shizume traffic. They’re both done with work for the day – Moto with the florist shop she’s recently found employment with, Yata with the delivery service at the restaurant she works at on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The sky’s a dusky purple, marred by chunks of heavy gray cloud, and the threat of rain has driven most people off the streets and into their homes, leaving them to enjoy the park in relative solitude  

“What do you think?” continues Yata, tugging at her hair, “I mean, it’s almost down to my boobs!”

“Eh? I dunno Yata, it’s your hair – I think it looks good at any length.”

Yata can’t help but think for a second how Fushimi would have curved the corner of her mouth and asked _what boobs_ ,to which Yata would have squawked some rude reply and hit her on the head.

Then she frowns, because she's not fucking thinking about that traitor anymore. 

“Well maybe I’ll just cut it all off,” proclaims Yata, becoming interested in the drawstrings of her hoodie.

“No, don’t do that!"

Yata raises an eyebrow, and Kamamoto smiles.

“Okay, long. I think it looks good long. Maybe don’t cut it too much?”

“Yeah, not like I can even afford a decent haircut anyways,” replies Yata, leaning over and toeing at the dirt with her sneakers. “Too bad Totsuka is gone, remember when she went through that stylist phase?” 

Kamamoto doesn’t say anything at first, and when Yata glances over at her she looks almost surprised. Yata doesn’t blame her. Nearly eight months since it happened, and it’s one of the first times Yata’s spoken casually of Totsuka’s death. 

“I remember,” says Moto after a moment. “But she wasn’t very good at hair.”

“Heh, that’s right – it took Eric like two months to get it all even again." Yata stretches, listens to her bones crack. "It was still better then when she tried magic, though.”

Kamamoto laughs. It’s a big, full, non-apologetic sound, and Yata can’t help but grin a little.

“Or when she tried learning to skateboard,” Yata adds. “And Kusanagi almost killed us for scuffing up her precious floors.”

Kamamoto nods and smiles, and the two of them sit and listen to the leaves rustling as the wind whips through the trees, the smell of rain thickening.

The really weird thing about death, Yata has come to learn, isn’t in that instant when you feel their life slipping, or when you’re standing at their grave for the first time. Although that’s a pretty fucking terrible pain to wrestle with, too. Like doing a trick you’ve done a hundred times before and just wiping out all of a sudden – face to the pavement, gut flipping, fighting for air – that was how it had felt with Totsuka. And then Mikoto.

But that had been easier than what came later. It was the same with injuries – ripping up the skin on your knees or breaking your bones, that sucks. But it’s in the days after, when you’re banging into shit or walking funny, accidentally tearing new skin that’s trying to heal, that shit hurts a hundred times worse.

There are still days when Yata walks into HOMRA and looks to her right, expecting to see her Queen dozing on the couch or smoking a cigarette. And the realization crashes over her again – a little smaller, a little more manageable, but still there. It’s there in all the small day-to-day details of her life, when she’s handing money over to the cashier at the grocery store, when she’s opening the door to her cramped apartment at night. There is a small part of her that is always conscious of the absence of Ms. Totsuka and Ms. Mikoto, and the heaviness that absence brings. And it’s weird because the feeling is almost familiar, like Yata’s gone through all the motions and bruises of it before, but she can’t really pin what or when and anyways, jesus, this overthinking thing really isn’t for her. It’s all so much easier when she’s with people or working at her job, when she’s sitting in the park with Kamamoto, using idle conversation to push away gaping thoughts.

“Did you visit HOMRA today?” asks Yata, head titled back on the bench so that she has a clear view of the darkening sky.

“Yeah – Kusanagi told me to tell you to come by tomorrow before the bar opens, she has something to tell you.”

Something in Yata jumps at Kamamoto’s words, and she straightens up. “What is it? Did Anna see? Did they find the new Queen?” 

“No no, sorry – nothing like that,” replies Kamamoto quickly. Yata slumps back against the bench again.

“Shit, Moto,” she says. “Then what is it?”

“Kusanagi can explain it better. Something with Munakata.”

“The Blues,” grumbles Yata. “Why does she bother dealing with them?”

Kamamoto is about to answer, when Yata adds, “It’s their fault Ms. Mikoto’s gone.”

“I think it’s…more complicated than that,” says Kamamoto carefully.

“The Blue Queen ran her sword straight through Ms. Mikoto,” replies Yata, standing up. Her hands are balled into fists. “What’s so complicated about that?” 

Kamamoto is quiet, turning over words in her head, not really sure what to say. Because the thing with Yata is, despite being an open book, she’s still hard to read.

“Hey, hello? Earth to Moto!”

Kamamoto feels a light thud on her head and jerks up to see Yata, one fist braced against her hip and a pointed look on her face.

“You zoning out on me, Moto?”

“Sorry Yata,” she replies, rubbing her head. You stay in the past too long, the present has a way of making you pay for it. “What did you say?”

“I said, it looks like it’s going to rain. So I’m probably going to head back now.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Kamamoto, glancing up at the sky. “Probably a good idea.”

Yata retrieves her skateboard from where it’s leaning against the bench and grins over at her in that cocky, self-assured way that leaves Kamamoto feeling relieved. The blue clan is forgotten – for now, at least. 

“You’d better get moving soon unless you want to end up caught in the storm.”

“I know I know, I’m leaving now, too.”

“Yeah, but you’re like ten times slower than me!”

“Well, you have a skateboard!”

“Even if I didn’t, I’d be faster than you,” replies Yata, still grinning.

“Hey! That’s not fair – I’m pretty fast, you know.” replies Kamamoto.

“Yeah, if we’re talking about eating ramen – ”

“Oi, Yata!”

“What?” says Yata, swerving away and grinning back at her. “Catch me and do something about it, Moto!” The sky rumbles overhead, and Kamamoto feels a drop hit her nose.

“Oh shit!” shouts Yata, almost laughing. “Now we’re fucked!”

But she doesn’t push off against the pavement or race away. She just throws her head back and sticks her tongue out – figuring if she’s already gonna be stuck in this storm, she might as well try to catch some raindrops.

xxx

On Fridays Yata works behind the counter of a small party supply store where she rings up purchases and fills up balloons with helium. It’s a cramped yet colorful workplace, with a thick cloying smell that sucks, but you get used to after a couple of minutes. On Fridays the only other worker is a boy named Kaito who spends his morning checking inventory and restocking the shelves with brightly colored wax candles and small novelty items and firecrackers. When he’s done with that he usually joins Yata behind the counter, helping out customers and watching daytime soaps on the small TV they keep propped by the cash register. It’s not a bad gig as far as Yata is concerned, even if the shop’s smell does always seems to get stuck in her clothes. Kaito’s quiet and he always gives Yata whatever he can’t finish at lunch, so he’s alright in her book. 

When they’re closing up shop that Friday, Kaito makes an uncharacteristic attempt at conversation. Yata’s only half-listening to him when she answers that yeah, she’s got plans that night, because half of her is wondering what Kusanagi has to tell her and the other half is trying to add up this month’s savings and figure out how much she’ll have left over after she pays rent – if anything. She tells Kaito bye, see you next Friday, and skates off towards HOMRA. The pavement is still wet from last night’s storm, but the skies have cleared up and it’s a beautiful blue. Her workweek is over and the air tastes good – by the time Yata gets to HOMRA, half an hour before the bar is set to open, she’s feeling light inside.

“Oi, I’m here!” she announces as she enters the bar, tucking her skateboard under her arm and walking over towards the bar. A few other members of HOMRA are hanging out, mostly just the ones that Kusanagi trusts to serve her customers without offending them.  

Kusanagi herself is leaned over the bar, discussing something with Chitose when Yata wanders over.

“Ah, Yata,” she says, straightening up. “Glad you’re here.”

“Moto said you had something to talk about,” replies Yata, taking a seat at the bar.

“Yes, I do.” Kusanagi pauses a moment, fingers drumming against the countertop as she regards Yata like a familiar puzzle. “The bar is having a couple of important guests over tonight.”

“Like who?” 

“Like Reisi Munakata.”

Yata just stares for a moment, as though she’s expecting Kusnagi to follow up with _oh, but_ _not the Reisi Munakata we know, not the Blue Queen – a totally different Reisi Munakata_. And when she doesn’t, Yata goes red.

“What the _fuck_.”

“I’m telling you because this is a matter that concerns HOMRA, so you deserve to know. But it’s not up for debate.”

“What the fuck are the Blues doing showing up at our place, huh?”

Yata’s tone is all fire and indignation. There’s a raw, back-of-the-throat heat in her voice, which is precisely what Kusanagi was worried about. She sighs, and shifts her stance a little.

“They’re coming because I invited them.”

“ _What_?”

“Shit, Yata – don’t burn my bar!” exclaims Kusanagi sharply, darting forwards to smack Yata’s glowing red hands off of her countertop. “This wood was specially imported,” she mutters as she leans close to the grain, inspecting to make sure no damage was done.

Yata, meanwhile, is seething.

“Who gives a fuck about some stupid English wood?” shouts Yata, standing up and swatting off the calming hand Chitose is trying to place on her shoulder. “What are you doing inviting Blues to HOMRA headquarters!”

“First of all, it is _my_ bar,” says Kusanagi, who spends a few more seconds examining the countertop before looking up to meet Yata’s anger. “I get final say on who’s allowed or not.”

“Not if they’re Blue!”

“Yata, be sensible,” snaps Kusanagi. “We can’t go on like we did before – especially without a Queen. Scepter 4 has similar goals as us – we don’t have to work with them, but we don’t have to fight them all the time.”

“And who says _you_ get to make that decision?” There are thin, red threads of aura curling off of Yata’s skin. She is speaking through gritted teeth. “You’re not our Queen!”

“I know I’m not,” replies Kusanagi in an even tone. “And I would never try to be,” she continues. “But right now we need to survive. And Scepter 4 – ”

“Killed our Queen! And now you want to invite them in?”

The rest of the bar’s occupants – Chitose and Anna, Fujishima and Eric – are all holding their breath, focused on the unfolding scene. Behind the rows of fancy liquor bottles and slow easy smiles, Kusanagi has an untapped viciousness that’s easy to forget about, and Yata is toeing a dangerous line.

“Stop being a child,” Kusanagi says. “I told you because I thought I could trust you to act like HOMRA’s vanguard, not a spoiled brat.”

“It’s the vanguard’s job to protect HOMRA! And you – you want to let the Blues right in – they murdered our Queen! Why are you forgetting that?” The red around Yata is growing, pulsating, but none of the four watching make any attempt to move towards her.

“I’m not – ”

“You were her _friend_!”

Kusanagi narrows her eyes and takes one step forwards.

“You always judge too quickly, Yata,” she says, shaking her head. “None of this is so simple. There is more going on, there is _always more going on,_ than just you and me and HOMRA _._ ”

“It seems simple enough to _me_.”

Kusanagi smacks a hand on the countertop suddenly, the sharp bang filling the room. “Wake up! This isn’t a game, Yata. The Blue Queen is coming because we want to make this city, this country better – do you see how we’re going to hurt it, if we just keep carrying on the way we do?”

“All I see is a fucking coward!”

The words spit themselves out before Yata can think twice. For a split-second, even she seems to regret it, eyes going wide. The bar is a powder keg, the air thick with a dangerous silence and ready to blow at the slightest spark.

Kusanagi levels a stare at Yata, and in it is an echo of the old power Mikoto used to wield – that way she could just _look_ at you. Yata straightens up again, covers up her regret.

“So, I shouldn’t count on your help tonight?”

The question comes out as a slow drawl, almost uncaring, but everyone in the bar catches the weight lying beneath Kusanagi’s words. If Yata wants to, she can still turn this around.

Instead she curls her fingers into fists, eyes fixed on the floor. Without saying another word, she turns around and storms out of the bar, nearly plowing over Kamamoto who’s just walking through the door.

“Oi, Yata – !”

Kamamoto stares after her friend, then looks over at Kusanagi, who just shakes her head. Everyone else is slowly starting to move again, Chitose helping to wipe down the bar, Eric and Fujishima disappearing into the backroom to recheck the inventory, all of them a little too focused on their respective tasks. Kamamoto looks to her left, and raises her eyebrows.

“She forgot her skateboard.”

But when she looks back out the window there’s no sign of Yata, who’s already disappeared into the bustling Friday afternoon crowd.

* * *

“Do you have plans tonight, Fushimi?" 

Fushimi’s hands pause over her keyboard, and she turns in her chair to meet her Captain. Reisi Munakata looks at her expectantly, lips tilted up in that indecipherable smile.

“No, ma’am,” replies Fushimi, already scowling. If the Captain is asking it means she probably has some forced team-building activity in mind, the exact type of thing Fushimi tries to do everything in her power to avoid. There are only so many Scepter 4 game nights a disenchanted girl can take.

“Good, I would have ordered you to cancel them anyways.”

“Ma’am?” 

“We have official Scepter 4 business tonight, Fushimi,” says Munakata. “I am instructing Lieutenant Awashima, Akira Hidaka, and yourself to accompany me at the HOMRA bar.”

“Pardon me, Captain,” says Fushimi in a bored tone that in no way betrays how her pulse quickens at any mention of HOMRA. “But visiting a bar run by delinquents hardly sounds like official Scepter 4 business.”

“Think of it as a peace talk,” replies Munakata, and Fushimi remembers Kusanagi from all those months ago.

“Building bridges, Captain?”

“That is an excellent way to think of it, Fushimi.”

“HOMRA’s more about burning bridges, from what I recall,” she replies. “Literally, in most cases.”

Munakata chuckles lightly under her breath. Fushimi has never gotten the hang of the Captain’s sense of humor, her mild bemusement at things Fushimi’s always seen as irritating or unnecessary. Captain Munakata, always as though she’s understanding an entirely different joke.

“Always such negativity from you, Fushimi.”

“Why bother dragging me to this? Or Hidaka, even?” Fushimi can understand, maybe, why Munakata would want to drag Fushimi along. But Hidaka is well down the line and still grins with that stupid, wet-behind-the-ears smile that often leaves Fushimi itching to punch her in the face.

“You’re my third in command, and we want to show HOMRA we’re serious,” replies Munakata.

The old burn wound along her collarbone pricks, and Fushimi curls her right hand into a fist to keep from scratching.

“I’m not showing up to look like some trained dog.”

Munakata raises an eyebrow. “Is that how you think I see you?”

_I think every Queen knows the exact value of each of her subordinates_ is what Fushimi wants to say, but there are some lines even Fushimi won’t cross. How does she let herself get trapped in these labyrinthine conversations?

“I still don’t understand the need for Hidaka,” she says instead, shifting the conversation, and Munakata allows it.

“Hidaka has her hidden talents.” The smile. “We’re leaving after work, be ready at 18:30.”

Munakata is halfway to her office when Fushimi turns in her chair, calls out to her:

“Since this is official Scepter 4 business,” she drawls, “I assume we should all remain in uniform?”

“Casual dress will be acceptable,” replies Munakata without looking back. Fushimi watches as Munakata disappears back into her office with its locks and its puzzles, and with a slight frown turns back to her computer.

xxx

It’s Friday afternoon and traffic is a slow-moving mess. It’s nearly a quarter past seven when they finally unload from the taxi to stand in front of HOMRA. Hidaka is practically dancing down the street, bubbling over with a nearly palpable excitement at being chosen to accompany her three superior officers on tonight’s “ _assignment_.” Lieutenant Awashima is professional and unreadable, as always, even though Fushimi knows he’s visited this bar on plenty of Friday evenings in the past. 

Fushimi is agitated, struggling to find a foothold in whatever logic it is that has led Munakata to dragging her along to HOMRA. Is she here thanks to rank, as Munakata suggested, or is it something else? Is she some packaged piece offering, a freshly laundered white flag to hang between them? Fushimi’s betrayal is one of the few gaping wounds spread between HOMRA and Scepter 4, healed enough that it’s receded mostly to a manageable tenderness, but not so much that she’d go anywhere near this bar without a direct order from her Captain.

But then, Fushimi’s not the only wavering uncertainty between HOMRA and Scepter 4. Captain Munakata, whose hair is down but still has her sword at her waist, is the one who pushed steel through the Red Queen’s ribs, after all.

She turns to speak to them, and Fushimi slides her focus into place, reframes her Friday night as just another assignment.

“Remember,” says Munakata, glancing at each of them in turn. “Peace talk.” Then she smiles, strides over towards the doors, and pushes them forwards.

It has been a long, long time since Fushimi has been inside this bar. It’s a Friday night, and Kusanagi is doing brisk business, chairs and barstools packed with unfamiliar faces. Everyone is letting go after the end of a long week, the room full of eager chattering and cigarette smoke and laughter, peppered with the clinking of glasses and shouts for service. Flitting throughout the crowd are HOMRA members that Fushimi knows only from dockets and files, brief street skirmishes and the incident on the island – she was never their clansman.

Fushimi knows, with her quick temper and quicker fists, Misaki won’t be amongst the bar’s servers. But she scans the crowd quickly anyway, and can’t help the disappointment that burns in her stomach when there’s no sign of the foulmouthed skateboarder. It’s been months – it still burns. 

The hostess standing at the front of the bar is busy flipping through a notebook in her hand, and doesn’t even look up when she asks, “Welcome – how many guests?”

“Four,” replies Munakata, and the hostess snaps her head up, eyes wide beneath the black baseball cap she wears. She opens her mouth, but it’s a few seconds before the words find their way out.

“S-Sorry, four, right? Follow me, please,” she eventually says, turning and leading them through the crowd. The room is packed and the bar overflowing, but there’s an empty table in the back corner and she leads them straight to it. Fushimi glances around the room again, at the people crammed almost two to a stool at the bar, and looks at their table again, empty, waiting, tucked inconspicuously in the back. Munakata and Awashima slide in one side of the table, Hidaka and Fushimi on the other. The hostess leaves a set of menus but hesitates. Fushimi spares her a deprecating glance, and she starts, turning away and quickly disappearing into the crowd.

“Fushimi.”

Fushimi snaps her attention to her captain, sitting up straight in her seat. “Captain?”

But Munakata is smiling. “Perhaps try to look a little less like you wouldn’t be so abject to dying tonight?”

Fushimi clicks her tongue, but Munakata has already turned to her lieutenant, commenting on the bar’s decor.

It is Kusanagi herself who comes to their table to deliver a set of hot towels for each of them. Fushimi looks on coldly as she distributes them, Kusanagi’s smile wary but genuine with a lit cigarette hanging off the edge of it. She is the only one of HOMRA that Fushimi has spoken to since the island – not by choice, but because Kusanagi always ropes her into some small bit of forced conversation during her infrequent visits to Scepter 4 headquarters. She doesn’t know still if Kusanagi has forgiven her, but then she doesn’t know if she has asked for it either.

“I’m glad you could come, Captain Munakata,” says Kusanagi, bowing slightly. Her hair is tied in a small ponytail at the base of her neck, but a few strands have worked their way loose. Munakata tilts her head slightly in acknowledgement.

“I’ve only ever heard good things about your establishment, Ms. Kusanagi. It seemed about time we give it a proper visit.”

“I’m glad you did – and I wonder where you heard these good things,” she replies. There’s a bite of the old Kusanagi that Fushimi remembers from her own HOMRA days, and Kusanagi doesn’t look at him, but Fushimi sees the way Awashima colors a light shade of pink.

Then Kusanagi turns to look directly at Fushimi. They’ve had a handful of scattered conversations at the  Scepter 4 headquarters, but it’s different from the way she looks at her in the corner of her bustling bar and says, “I’m glad to see you, too, Fushimi.”

Fushimi curls her hand into a fist beneath the table. Sitting back in this bar, it’s all too easy to remember how Kusanagi used to call her over to help her clean up the bar, and how she had talked to her without squeezing or demanding or questioning. Her smiles were genuine, her motives clear and unhidden, and Fushimi had hated that. She hated those smiles Kusanagi had given her then, just as she hates the smile Kusanagi is giving her now.

“It would have been rude,” replies Fushimi, when the words finally come, “To refuse an order from my captain.”

Kusanagi laughs. “Of course! Still all business all the time, aren’t you, Fushimi?” She’s still wearing that smile but doesn’t give Fushimi a chance to reply when she turns to the rest of the table and adds, “Take your time. Just flag down one of my waiters when you’re ready.”

_You mean your thugs,_ Fushimi thinks to herself, but Kusanagi has already filtered back into the frenzied bar crowd. Fushimi wishes she hadn’t stopped by their table to speak to them. There wasn’t any point. And the whole thing leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

Munakata picks up her menu and begins to study it as though it’s a newly filed report. Lieutenant Awashima leans over to her and mutters something that only his captain hear.

“I haven’t been here before,” says Hidaka on Fushimi’s right. “I don’t know what to get!”

“It’s a bar, like every other bar,” replies Fushimi, who has barely glanced at her menu. How long will this evening last? “Alcohol is alcohol. Get what you like.”

“Well…what are you getting?” asks Hidaka, not to be deterred. Fushimi grimaces.

“I don’t know. Water.”

“ _Water_? You’re going to order water?”

“This is still Scepter 4 business, isn’t it?” snaps Fushimi. “I don’t drink while I’m working.”

“These are special circumstances, Fushimi,” says Munakata from across the table. “And don’t try to make excuses about the price next – I’m paying tonight.”

Fushimi grumbles to herself while Hidaka chirps a bright “Thank you, Captain!” Awashima remains a statue. Fushimi wonders if he’ll order his usual bean paste monstrosity – probably.

“Maybe I’ll just do something simple,” hums Hidaka, scanning the menu, and Fushimi wonders if she’s talking to her.

“Are you even old enough to drink?” asks Fushimi, resting her elbow on the table.

“Of course I am!” exclaims Hidaka, “How old do you think I am?”

Fushimi shrugs. “Only teenagers get this excited about drinking.”

Hidaka laughs, even leans in and nudges Fushimi before replying, “No, it’s just only you who hates going out and having a good time.”

“Who says I’m having a good time?”

“Isn’t this how you have fun?” replies Hidaka, “I thought being grouchy and pissed off was your idea of a fun night.”

Across the table Munakata, who has apparently been listening, laughs, and even Awashima cracks something of a smile. Fushimi bristles. Hidaka shoots a glance across the table, looking nervous for half a second, as though she’d forgotten Captain Munakata was with them. But then it passes and she’s looking up at Fushimi with a wary grin, like a dog that’s just chewed through a favorite pair of shoes. Fushimi glares.

“Excuse me,” she says through gritted teeth, slipping out of her chair and heading for the door. The bar has grown even more crowded since they entered and she has to physically push her way past some people. Which she does, with a little more force than is strictly necessary. She doesn’t think Hidaka is following her, which is the one thing going for her this evening.

After the heat from the bar, the cold evening air comes as a welcome relief. The sky is dark blue, fading into black, but the street Fushimi is standing on is humming with a frenetic, late night energy. There are other crowded establishments along the block, flickering lights in the windows and doorways painting enticing invitations for the people still looking for the right place to let off a little steam, to drink and laugh off the work week.

Fushimi stares at the world around her and exhales, wishing for the hundredth time she could tolerate the bitter and acrid taste of cigarettes because now would be the perfect time for a smoke. Her stomach growls, and she thinks it would also be a perfect time for dinner. At any other place in the world. 

She doesn’t notice Misaki Yata, who is leaned up against a building across the street, glaring at the ground as though her glare can put cracks in it. Fushimi just rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck, and tries to weigh the misery of returning to that table versus the uncomfortable meeting she’ll have to endure on Monday if she just goes home.

She heaves out another sigh. This is stupid. Peace talk? They’re ordering drinks and letting Kusanagi take their orders. This is no peace talk. This is bullshit.

She glances at the bar to her back, then pushes away. She abandoned Ashinaka high school months ago and Lieutenant Awashima gave her a stern look for it. Leaving the red clan’s perverted headquarters can’t amount to a worse offense. And she’s hungry.

“Hey, Fushimi!”

She tenses up, but keeps walking. Akira Hidaka doesn’t take a hint and jogs to catch up with her.

“Wait up!”

“What.”

“I’m sorry – you know, if I made you mad, back in there?”

Fushimi clicks her tongue. “I’m not leaving because of you.”

“Oh, I was just – wait, you’re leaving?” says Hidaka, stopping. “Are you leaving?”

“No, I’m just walking away and going home.”

“I’m sorry, don’t leave just because I fucked up!” says Hidaka, following after Fushimi.

“Tch, how self obsessed are you?”

“If it’s not me, then – ”

“This whole thing is a waste of time.”

Hidaka glances up at her for a moment before asking, “This meeting? Or the Captain’s plan?”

“Both.”

“It seems like a good idea to me.”

The glare that Fushimi turns on Hidaka is the first time that night she’s met her eyes. Hidaka sighs, blowing a strand of hair out of her face.

“I mean, the Captain’s right, we don’t have anything against each other, we should all kind of be working together.”

“You have the same problem,” says Fushimi, “You and the Captain both think HOMRA is some type of _organization_ , some type of group we can work with.”

“They’re not?”

“No,” snaps Fushimi, “They’re thugs. They run around playing superhero while destroying Japan. Their last queen was ready to cause another Kagutsu Crater, just to get revenge for an already dead woman.” She shakes her head. “The red clan is violence and stupidity. They don’t do allegiances and they don’t do peace treaties.”

“They can’t…they can’t all be like that,” says Hidaka slowly, in a tone that asks _weren’t you one of them_?

“They are,” says Fushimi. Hidaka’s only answer is silence, and they continue like that for a few moments before Fushimi turns on her again. “If you don’t turn around soon, you’ll be in trouble on Monday.”

Hidaka looks startled. “I’m not going back! Not if you’re not!”

“You’ll disappoint the Captain.”

“Well, so will you!”

“Yes, but I don’t care what the Captain thinks of me.”

“What? You think it’s bad I care what the Captain thinks?”

“Tch, I don’t care what you care about,” replies Fushimi. “I just don’t need you following me home.”

“I’m not – I’m not following you home!” she huffs. “We just live in the same building!”

“I’m walking.”

“You’re going to _walk_?” says Hidaka, blanching. “But headquarters is so far away!”

“Then why don’t you catch a cab,” replies Fushimi, “Since you’re not following me.”

Hidaka opens her mouth, then pauses and grins.

“I’m trying to save money!” she says. “And the environment. I was thinking of walking, too.”

Fushimi grimaces. Somewhere in this conversation, something backfired. Her stomach chooses that moment to growl again. And Hidaka seizes an opportunity.

“Are you hungry by any chance?”

“No.”

“Because I’m starving,” she continues, “And I know a pretty good place around here.”

“Great, you go.”

“What, you’re going to walk all the way back to headquarters on an empty stomach?”

“I’m not hungry,” replies Fushimi, as her stomach interrupts with another rude grumble.

Hidaka just grins again. Unlike Fushimi, on whom smiles still appear like a recently acquired second-language, Hidaka’s grins are easy and infectious. She was a girl made for grinning.

“Come on Fushimi! It won’t kill you to eat something with a friend.”

Fushimi glowers while the scars along her collarbone itch, but she doesn’t flat out refuse and Hidaka takes that for a victory.

“Yes!” she exclaims, pumping a fist in the air before grabbing Fushimi’s arm, leading her down a different street, “And I’m a fast eater, too, so don’t worry, it won’t take us too off track!”

Fushimi is already full of regret. She closes her eyes for a second and grits out, “Fine. But you’re paying.”

And Hidaka just laughs.

* * *

Yata fucked up, and she knows she fucked up. So she hangs around outside the bar, Kusanagi’s words still knocking around in her skull. _I told you because I thought I could trust you to act like HOMRA’s vanguard._

Well, she is the fucking vanguard, right? She won’t step foot inside the bar, but she can watch from the outside, and if the Blues try to start anything she’s ready. She watches every approaching group, every  taxi and bus that stops nearby the establishment, keeping a look out for sheathed swords and blue coats. She knew Captain Munakata was coming, which she assumed meant her icy lieutenant would be with her, too. 

But she hadn’t expected Saruhiko Fushimi to be among the Blues invited back in.

When she sees Fushimi step out of the cab, it’s fucking weird. It’s like losing your footing and finding yourself tumbling all the way back to the bottom. It’s like the last time you had anything to do with her she had you slammed up against brick and was getting ready to pull a knife on you, and now you’re watching the back of her step out of a cab. It’s like you thinking you’re fine after not seeing her or talking to her for months, and then seeing her stand around, bored and unhappy, in front of the last place you’ve really called home and it gets you seeing red all over again. It’s fucking weird.

She turns around and ducks between the narrow street behind her, feeling angry for a reason she can’t name and wishing she hadn’t been so fucking dumb as to leave her skateboard in HOMRA. For a while she just closes her eyes and breathes. She thinks about texting Moto, but she’s working for Kusanagi tonight and besides, what’s she going to say? _Hey I just saw Saru from across the street and nothing happened but now I feel like shit_. Yeah right. That type of shit – that shit isn’t her game.

So she stays like that, until the red kind of fades and she trusts herself to go back to standing and glaring where she can watch the bar. She sees Fushimi leave later, with some excited girl who either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about the way Fushimi is treating her like some type of personal punishment. Yata keeps waiting for the other girl to turn around or back away, to give up in a familiar huff, but she’s still with Fushimi when the two disappear down the street.

And that shit, it doesn’t leave Yata angry. She doesn’t even want to think about what it leaves her.

All she wants to do is grab her skateboard and go home, maybe stuff her face and then pass out playing videogames. But she can’t, and she knows she can’t. So she stays there, loitering across the street with her hands jammed in the pockets of her hoodie, waiting for time to drag on. After a while she sees Captain Munakata leave with her pissy lieutenant, but it’s a couple of hours later before everyone else has cleared out. Yata shifts her weight from one foot to the other, chews her lip as she focuses on the front door, watching the last customers trickle out, followed eventually by the HOMRA members that were working and the small assortment of restaurant staff Kusanagi has that aren’t HOMRA-affiliated. Most of the lights are off now, and almost everyone’s left, except for one person. Yata sighs and straightens up, dragging herself across the street.

When she walks in, it’s quiet. The tables have been pushed back over to the side, chairs stacked on top and bar stools tucked in beneath the bar. Kusanagi doesn’t look up when Yata walks in, just continues wiping down the insides of the glasses stacked in front of her.

“You’re a little late, Captain Munakata and her group already left,” says Kusanagi, replacing one glass and picking up another. Her short hair has worked its way out of its ponytail during the night and loose blonde strands drift around her face. “In fact – just about everybody’s left.”

Yata doesn’t say anything.

“Unless it’s this you came for,” says Kusanagi, reaching for something under the bar. She leaves the glass she was wiping on the countertop and walks around the bar, appearing on the other side with Yata’s skateboard. She drops it the ground and gives it a gentle kick towards Yata.

The board glides across the floor, coming to a stop against Yata’s leg. She looks from Kusanagi to the board, then back to Kusanagi again, and swallows.

“I’m sorry.”

Kusangi’s arms are crossed across her chest. She just stares at Yata for a moment, before heaving out a sigh and reaching into her back pocket for a small carton.

“Alright,” she says, pulling out a cigarette. “I’m listening.”


End file.
